


30 Day Writing Challenge

by scarrletmoon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Demons, Multi, Vampires
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-03 06:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/695317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarrletmoon/pseuds/scarrletmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>30 Days of Original Fiction</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this world in my head for a while, and this is sort of a prequel to the story. This starts with Auris (or Old Earth) when vampires, demons and humans co-existed until war (Belli) broke out. 
> 
> This follows a boy through a brief summary of history until the execution a vampire. I'd put this somewhere near the end of the war, before Restoration. 
> 
> Still not sure if this is going to be 30 parts of this verse or a bunch of different things, but we'll see. 
> 
> _I will finish this challenge this time_

The sun adores the moon in our land. The sun adores the earth in our land. In our place, our home, we love how she loves, adore how she adores every creature with her sunlight:

She has no choice in what she does, but she persists, has come to accept and burn.

We started with her and we shall end with her in the center of our universe.

With life we love, with death we end, and in this cycle we persist forever.

-  _Madonia: A History of Civilizations_


	2. Accusation

They were our enemies. That was what I was taught, what I believed for years. I’d been fighting for so long that I didn’t even consider them people- I never had. I was sixteen, I hadn’t been around when they had been ‘harmless’, when we had  trusted them, brought them into our homes and started families with them. 

There had always been humans who had been suspicious of them. ‘If these creatures are so powerful,’ they believed, ‘they couldn’t really live peacefully with us.’  
  
But they stopped our wars. They kept us peaceful (out of fear, some argued). They became fathers and mothers and daughters and sons. Some humans were jealous of those who chose immortality. Others welcomed it.  
  
Then the demons and vampires tried to reconcile; a drop of blood was shed and Belli began.

It was hard to tell which were stories and what was human propaganda:  I was told that vampires and demons escaped their barren home planet and came to Earth where they exchanged their knowledge in exchange for solace; I was told that they killed humans and we followed them out of fear; I heard that they were peaceful people who survived on their own magic until they realized the potency of blood.   
  
They never had blood before Belli. They were similar to us in that they were birthed from their mothers, grew and learned (albiet faster than any human child) until they stopped, hardened and ceased to change. They had no choice in their immortality. Some embraced it, others decided to die with the humans they loved.   
  
One of them- a demon woman, Aana Fayen- tried to end the war between them. Vampires and demons had never gotten along. They killed each other on sight. We were divided- those who chose demons and those who chose vampires. It was easier that way.   
  
There was a disturbance in the air, a low murmur of anger at the thought of compromise and reconciliation. And then in the midst of this,  a human woman cut her finger while cooking and her vampire husband brushed the blood against his lips.   
  
‘She fell down the stairs in our house,’ he’d cried, ‘I couldn’t save her.’  
  
He lied, of course. They found her body later, sucked dry with her eyes still wide open in horror. Meanwhile the man had told his friends, his family, the secret wandered and was heard by demons, and they discovered flesh-  
  
We developed weapons. Guns and swords and silver chains, brands and fighting techniques that the conspiracists and cynics had kept hidden for centuries. We formed clans in families, blood pacts, a hatred for the vampires and demons that had done nothing to us. They were dragged out of their homes and ripped apart with silver chains, shot in their cold hearts and buried in pieces under stone.   
  
Auris* burned.   
  
And now here we were, sacrificing another vampire as an example. Vampires and demons hated each other, but they were more alike than different. One devoured blood, the other flesh; one stayed almost human in battle and the other become a horrifying winged beast. We captured some to study them, but most of them committed suicide once they realized what we were up to. They would have overpowered us if they had worked together, but instead the vampires fought demons and the humans fought them both.   
  
The vampire looked at us from where he was tied to the stake, his body covered in thin, silver chains. His eyes were afraid. He was only a boy.   
  
The drums began.   
  
“I!”  
  
It was always gray here. I didn’t know what the sun looked like, and there was no time to explain such trivial things to me. I was here to fight, not hear stories.   
  
“Ikde!”  
  
The crowd was becoming restless with excitement. I could feel all of their eyes on my back, congratulating me for catching this one, for bringing out the thief accused of selling our secrets to the enemy. They called it bravery.   
  
It wasn’t . I was just a coward who didn’t want to die. There was nothing heroic about that.   
  
“Hasho!”   
  
The chains pulled, the boy screamed and the crowd cheered.  
  
 _“Anda!”_  
  
 _Help me._  
  
The crowd laughed as his skin split and the venom in his veins spilled out of eyes, his open mouth, his torn limbs.   
  
I looked away.   
  
They were still our enemies.   
  
 _*Auris: old human name for Earth_


	3. Restless

I regard New Moons the same way I consider other vampires: with a deep, ardent hatred that has always been unshakably instinctual. There are a lot of things that make my life a lot harder than it already is- Sophia, work, school, being constantly surrounded by temptation- and insomnia and bloodlust are things I could really do without. It’d be nice maybe, if I knew others who went through the same thing.

Then again, I always kill the others.

At least I’m better this year, I think, sitting up with my back against the wall (freezing concrete; it’s always cold here, but I deal with it). There’s at least one day of the month when resisting becomes harder than it usually is, when it’s so painfully obvious that I’m <i>not human. But at least this time, they didn’t have to tie me up.

When I  close my eyes I can remember straining against the chains, snarling at everything that moved, being aware of what I was doing but not caring that wanted to murder everyone and everything, getting desperate and nearly ripping my arm apart to drink my own blood (which was acidic and nothing like the sweet scent of humans).

I feel it everyday, the suspicion and the guns pointed at me under the table . They don’t try to hide it anymore, which I appreciate because I hate the dishonesty. They’ll grudgingly admit that I’m good enough to fight with, but that doesn’t mean they’ll look at me like they do their own: it’s each man for himself here, but they’ve all silently agreed to stay away from me and make sure no one else gets too close.

They don’t understand me, the vampire that kills vampires. They waited in those first few weeks for me to screw up, to trip and give them an excuse to at least get rid of me. I was 12 years old when I showed up,covered in blood and my own vomit on their doorstep. I’d  never held a sword in my life. The only thing I really had going for me was what I already had: my speed, my strength, my power over the elements. But they let me in. They had to take me in when I looked like I was about to die, when I looked so obviously human.

I seemed harmless enough, but there was also the fact that I’d somehow found a clan base that was completely undetectable to outsiders. No one found this place <i>by accident. No kid crawled their way to the door, through dense forest and stolen enchantments and left bloody handprints on the door. Sophia made them let me stay when I recovered, and even though they all still believed I was human, that was when they first started hating me. If their most hated leader was defending me, that was reason enough to be suspicious.

I fought, though. Learned how to hold a gun, how to pull the trigger without being afraid and then how to actually hit the target; hand to hand combat and stealth, how to hunt, to kill, to be ruthless. Jonathan was the only one who stepped up to train me. He taught me to never leave anyone behind if I could help it, even if the rest of the hunters said otherwise.  
He came from somewhere in America. He still hated his clan for killing his wife in order to bring him here. He’d tried to escape, but he couldn’t run away from his history. His father had been a hunter. The Claveros had been signed up for a service that would end when the world did: no amount of running would save any generation of hunters. People ran because no one wanted this life for their kid, but once Sophia had taken over from her parents, there was no saving anyone.

I listened to Jonathan though. I’ve never left anyone behind. It doesn’t make the rest of them hate me any less, but I still do it.

But the real trouble started when I started growing in my teeth.

I started biting things. Pencils, leather bracelets, my sleeves- my hand once, and then anything metal I could get my hands on.

We had meetings every day, 6 o’clock in the hall with everyone who wanted to be there (no one) and everyone who didn’t. It was usually a division leader reading a list of names (the dead), re-assigning newly opened  jobs, and general criticism of bad work (just to make sure we were scared enough for our lives that we didn’t slack off around headquarters). The hall was huge, part of an old cathedral probably, except the stained glass windows were dirty and black.  I’d seen pictures of churches, and the altar had none of the gold tassels and unnecessary trimmings I’d seen. And the lights were bright enough to hurt people’s eyes, which didn’t feel very holy to me (but what did I know- the most religious people got was over their plates at dinner if they made it that far).

It was June when a girl stood up two rows ahead of me, turned around, and gave me the most vicious glare I’d ever seen.

I’d been very attractively chewing on a nail file. It was embarrassing.

Not that anyone cared, actually, until she lunged at me, held my jaw and tipped my head back into the light. A few people turned around and then looked away. The unfortunate people who had to sit beside me stiffened a little, but there was nothing they could do about it. They could ignore me. That was about it.

And ignore they did, at least until she forced my mouth open and hissed at my sharpened teeth.

I’d tried to hide them, and I’m perfectly safe as long as I don’t get agitated: but getting jumped was enough to pull them out in full force- perfectly white and unused, virgin and untarnished and fatally sharp.

She hissed, jumped back, I was surrounded by guns a second later, and needless to say, the meeting was abruptly over.

From the top of the room, Sophia slowly stood. She watched me with her demon red eyes, and a smirk lifted one corner of her lips.

“Finally,” she said, with the sort of reverence that would have befit the church in any other context.

They locked me up for a few days, chained me to the wall in the basement with a dying, bloody child and waited for me to attack it (a hunter’s kid, found trying to run away; if I didn’t kill her, they figured they’d let her live if her escape wounds didn’t catch up  first). If I couldn’t resist, Sophia reassured them, then I didn’t deserve to live.

I’d had to deal with blood before: small wounds, torn out throats, burst blood vessels and rotting carcases ; but not like this, not looked in a room with the hot, wet stench and the terrified tremors of a heartbeat. I watched her through the darkness and she huddled into a corner hoping to disappear, only touching her food when the hunger pangs became painful.

I strained against the chains at first, struggled and snarled as she quivered in her corner. I got close enough to smell her hair and I expected her to lash out. It was what she was born to do after all. It was in the blood that I wanted so badly, in the flesh that had been carved for the sole purpose of destruction since the beginning of the New Age-

But she clamped her lips shut against a scream and stared at me as I snapped at her, and I stopped.

I watched her. Her hands clenched into fists by her sides, and her split skin bled. Her lips quivered and she cried but she never once dared to let her eyes leave mine.

I stuck to the other side of the room for the next few days until they pulled her out.

Now I can remember the door opening (the deafening metal screech and fresh scent of rust) and the light flooding into the room around a tall silhouette; the accompanying footsteps and the swish of the dress that Sophia wore (ruby like the rings on her fingers; red lace trim and shoes with heels in deep burgundy).

Her hair had always been white. They said she sold her soul to a demon in order to take her parents place as the head of the clan, but there was no proof- no proof to say otherwise either, but she seemed to like the rumours.

She stood in front of me, and I stared at the lace trim of her dress and hoped she’d kill me.

She didn’t. She had me released and took me with her, and I expected to be led to a guillotine.

I was led to her office.

“Platinum, silver and adamantine.” She purred as she took it out of the box (rosewood lined with copper silk), admired it like a newborn. Her fingers hovered over the engraved patterns, woven like ivy over the barrel; it was a work of art more than a weapon.

“No one has ever been able to wield it,” she murmured, and I could hear the bitterness in her voice. “It was cursed a long time ago.” She let her fingers fall on the the hammer; I heard a hiss and her hand jumped away, the skin pink and burned.

She looked at me hopefully as she pushed the box towards me. She still hated me, that much was obvious, but she wanted me to try. She’d tested humans before, the best hunters she had and the best ones she could find. But never a vampire. Especially not one like me.

I glared back at her, and she smiled, and after a moment’s hesitation I  picked up the gun.

I’m glad I remember the look on her face when I was able to touch it, when an experimental flick of my wrist twisted the handle into the hilt of a sword. It fitted my hand perfectly, as if it was made for me.

I smiled. We’ve hated each other passionately ever since.

Now as I’m waiting for the burn in my throat to pass, for my mouth to stop aching with rows of teeth too large to fit in it, for my hands to return to not being claws; I think about killing her. I think about slitting her throat with that blade, running it through her heart and twisting; I think about the dark black of her blood against the mottled gray of her dress and the last choked gasp her throat allows before the light leaves her eyes.

I think about killing her like I know she thinks about killing me, and it gets me through the New Moon.


End file.
